The Best And Worst Of Today’s Free-To-Play April Fools’ Pranks

April 1st… it’s the day no one on the Internet trusts. Sure, that patch news might look great, but something about it is just suspicious. For some, the entire day is complete misery as they wait for things to get back to normal; for others… well, it’s better than Christmas.

On a personal level, I look forward to all the silliness from game devs and am a fan of any kind of non-harmful pranks. That said, not all jokes are the same. Some — probably ones thrown together at the last minute by people who are about as funny as I am (I can’t purposefully do funny to save my life) — really fall flat. Some are simply okay, and others are pretty freaking funny.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to take a look at today’s attempts at humor from our favorite free-to-play game devs. The MMOBomb team is working together on this one — at least insofar as that we’re all weighing in with our opinion on which are awesome and which fall flat.

For Hi-Rez Studios, this video might actually just be another day in its media department. That’s not a bad thing, but it does mean that the company has a slightly unfair advantage since its YouTube channel looks a hell of a lot like April Fools’ every day. The company’s second job after making games is poking fun at itself.

That said, anyone familiar with SMITE’s reveal videos and Lore Lady will greatly appreciate the video.

As awesome as firing missiles at other massive ships in the ocean is, there’s just something about taking down a fleet of fleet of rubber duckies in a bath tub — or in this case, a jacuzzi.

Wargaming introduced a limited time mode, titled “Jacuzzi Mode,” for players to take part in. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like and even offers a variety of missions involving specially themed ships.

Since Wargaming didn’t offer a video of this content themselves, we got our own war game correspondent, Jason Winter, to record some scenes on the front lines, which you can view above. To read more about the mode, be sure to check out the announcement on the World of Warships site.

Gajin Entertainment looking for a “Director of Russian Bias”

4/5

Have you ever felt that Gaijin Entertainment just doesn’t give enough thought to Russian concerns? Do you think you’d be great at thwarting any developer’s attempts at Japanese Bias in their games (particularly War Thunder). Are you ready to police forums and make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to Soviet superiority? Well, if this were real, Gaijin has the job for you.

Unfortunately for you, it’s not. But it is a rather fantastic joke on Gaijin’s behalf. Everyone should be able to laugh at themselves. On the upside, they are running a bit of a sale for a “Russian Bias Advanced Pack” between now and the 4th.

Still, the effort was pretty humorous with the devs using commonly used conversational acronyms as QTE sets. That said, offering a skill bonus for pressing “GG” might improve player morale. Oh, and bonus points for the country music style video.

AdventureQuest 3D… Uh… What?

1/5

Yeaaaaah. I have no idea what they were thinking here. Basically the premise of this is that babies had somehow “scribbled” over the graphics of AdventureQuest 3D, doodling smiley suns and other things. Basically, the whole thing is silly, but not really impressive.

This one was really more of a World of Warcraft joke, but hey, it was still fun. This isn’t one of Blizzard’s best attempts, but considering the amount of jokes the company puts out every year, it’s OK.

Heroes of the Storm’s Nexus Lane view

3.33/5

Now this is more like it. Blizzard’s interactive pranks are always the better ones. This one functions a bit like Google Maps Street View, allowing players to zoom into the Nexus Lane via the Dragon Shire Battleground page.

OK, so totally not gaming-related at all, but you have to love Google’s jokes. We’re actually pretty sure that company hires people just to work on these things all year round. And hey, they got Snoop in on the action.

the author

QuintLyn is a long-time lover of all things video game related will happily talk about them to anyone that will listen. She began writing about games for various hobby sites a little over ten years ago and has taken on various roles in the games community. For the past five years she's been a writer at Gamebreaker TV.

Since the guys weighed in on this as well with the numbers, I’m not really sure if you mean me or all of us in general. Either way. Thank you. I have mixed feelings about doing opinion stuff but content like this is fun.